IN the dim and distant past – but not so long ago really – we dreamed the Scottish Parliament might usher in a new politics.

It was going to be different from adversarial Westminster, we hoped. It would be a consensual, caring, thoughtful place. A place of illuminating, considered debates leading to better legislation. Well, that went well.

Instead, our parliamentary sessions are most often scarred by an obvious and mutual scorn between Labour and SNP MSPs – most commonly seen in their desperate desire to jemmy open the tiny gaps between their parties who, whisper it, actually agree on so much.

In recent years, the rancour, invented grievance, and bad temper only got worse and, last week, seemed to hit a new low.

First, Labour and SNP managed to have a fight about the replacement of Trident – despite agreeing with each other.

Scottish Labour, of course, have just debated the issue at their conference for the first time since 1998 and came to the same result – opposing nuclear weapons and voting for disarmament.

This eventually produced a brief moment of consensus when the SNP, Labour, the Greens and independents joined together in the Scottish Parliament and voted 96-17 against replacing Trident.

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale during her speech at the Perth Concert Hall on the second day of the Scottish Labour Conference. (Image: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire)

If we thought that might usher in a new harmony on our parliament’s benches, we’d have been kidding ourselves as we then hurtled into the debate on tax credits.

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale had made the political weather, committing to tax the wealthiest Scots to reverse the cuts in full. This sent the Nats into a fury, as they said that no such powers were in the Scotland Bill.

Baillie accused Neil of being “a pantomime dame”. Neil used over-the-top rhetoric and contradicted himself. First, it wasn’t possible to reverse tax cuts as the Bill didn’t have the powers. Then, in the same speech, he said it was but still didn’t seem completely sure.

A little sanity was restored by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon eventually choosing the only option for the SNP – it really shouldn’t have been that difficult – and declaring the SNP would also move to protect the poor.

By then, the damage had been done to her party and our politics. It can’t go on like this.

Scotland has had too many pretend debates – from tax credits to the bedroom tax. They aren’t really about what they say they are. They are driven by trying to tarnish with Tory association your main opponents. Both Labour and SNP point left in rhetoric but neither do in action and deeds.

Everyone flaunts their social justice credentials (even Scots Tories) and feels good about themselves – while the whole debate lacks any link to reality.

This poses big problems. What does it say about the spirit of last year’s referendum and its democratic upsurge? It says it is business as usual and politics remains a closed shop.

Labour have spent devolution trying to delegitimise the Nats, or out-Nat the Nats, and failing.

Patrick Harvie is the co-convener of the Scottish Green Party and Member of the Scottish Parliament for the Glasgow region. Photographed in the garden of The Scottish Parliament

The SNP, Scotland’s dominant party, now find themselves as the incumbents and the majority party with an accountable record. Yet, they still want to act as if they are a minority – and avoid responsibility for their record in government.

When Labour were in the ascendant, they believed they owned “social justice” and never bothered to define it. Now, the SNP are enacting the same kind of mistaken politics – believing that in their DNA they have a divine right to embody “social justice”.

This leaves no room for talking about what we should actually do to help when 40 per cent of kids in Glasgow’s Easterhouse, for example, grow up in poverty and 27 per cent of people in the area live with a disability.

This in the fifth-richest economy in the world and one where prosperity and opportunity are a foreign country to millions of our fellow citizens.

We cannot go on with a debate of two tribes trying to club each other to death. What does it say about what an independent or any future Scotland would look like?

The SNP loyalist line is: “Don’t worry, everything will be alright on the night, post-independence.”

That’s terrible politics and prophecy.

The future Scotland is always being made in the present. If we want to live in a country – pluralist, pioneering, questioning orthodoxies and rich with ideas and ambitions – it doesn’t start on Independence Day One. It starts in the here and now.

We have to act as if we already are self-governing or independent. The SNP need to loosen up, bin the control politics and embrace a bit more substance. Independence isn’t just about full powers for the Parliament. It is about all of us as a nation and how we look after and relate to one another.

Independence is a state of mind. It is about much more than flags, embassies and shibboleths. It is about maturity, looking at ourselves in all our glories and shortcomings with honesty.

It is about taking responsibility. And, yes, that requires more powers. But, most of all, it necessitates a cultural mindshift in the grudge war between Labour and SNP in recent decades. This isn’t good enough any more.